[p. 14]As a probable result of Solomon Mack’s financial difficulties, the Smiths moved from their modest cabin in the Sharon hills and returned to be with Joseph Sr.’s family in Tunbridge, arriving shortly before Samuel Harrison’s birth on 13 March 1808.1 By this time, at least one of Asael Smith’s sons, Silas, and possibly John and Asael Jr., had moved to St. Lawrence County, New York, which meant that there was temporary living space available in Tunbridge.2 Ultimately each of Asael’s sons forsook their Vermont inheritances and settled in northeastern New York, while the stubborn Joseph Sr. would hang on another eight years, wandering from town to town until near-starvation forced him to abandon the unyielding soil of his homeland.

The Smiths stayed in Tunbridge a short time and then moved to nearby Royal­ton, but the tranquility of their four years in Sharon and Tunbridge in the bosom of the Mack and Smith families would contrast sharply with the tumult of the next eight years.

At Royalton, the Smiths settled into what was known as the “Metcalf neighborhood,” and Joseph Sr. may have engaged in “merchandising” part of the time.3 In later years, Lucy expressed a sentiment that probably contributed to their lack of success as merchants. While taking tea with the wives of some wealthy Palmyrans, Lucy defended her family’s humble circumstances, commenting that she was comfortably situated and quite happy to avoid the evils accompanying the mercantile profession. Her family’s circumstances, she said, had “not been obtained at the expense of the comfort of any human being; we owe no man [and] we never distressed any man, which circumstance almost invariably attends the mercantile life. So I have no reason to envy those who are [so] engaged.”4 Town records indicate that by the end of the Smiths’ three years in Royalton, Joseph Sr. had returned to cultivating a thirteen-acre farm.5

Royalton residents would later claim that Joseph Jr. attended school on Dewey Hill where Deacon Jonathan Kinney taught letters.6 If true, this would be the youngster’s [p. 15]first exposure to education outside the home. The Smith children would only sporadically participate in formal education.

During their residence in Royalton, Lucy gave birth to two sons: Ephraim, named after Joseph’s son in the Old Testament and born, according to Lucy’s memory, on 13 March 1810; and William, perhaps named after the young orphan who had accompanied Jason Mack and for whom the Smiths had much affection, born the following year, also on 13 March. Ephraim died eleven days after birth, which meant that there had been two deaths in the household, but this being the first to directly affect four-year-old Joseph.

In the month after William’s birth, Lucy reports that Joseph Sr.’s “mind became much excited upon the subject of religion” but that “he would not subscribe to any particular system of faith.” Rather, she remembered, her husband—like her brother Jason—“contended for the ancient order” as established by Jesus and his apostles. Joseph Sr. received a remarkable dream that confirmed this disposition.

As Lucy recalled the dream years later, her husband found himself walking through a wasteland completely barren except for some fallen trees. There was no sign of life; a “death-like silence prevailed.” Besides the “attendant spirit” who accompanied him, Joseph felt alone in this “gloomy desert.” The spirit told him the field represented the world “which now lieth inanimate and dumb, in regard to the true religion, or plan of salvation.” The spirit instructed Joseph to walk until he came to a log with a box on top, to open it, and to eat its contents which, the spirit said, “will give unto you wisdom and understanding.” As Joseph began to consume the contents of the box, he felt “perfectly happy” until he was interrupted by “all manner of beasts, horned cattle, and roaring animals, [which] rose up on every side in the most threatening manner possible, tearing the earth, tossing their horns, and bellowing most terrifically all around me, and they finally came so close upon me, that I was compelled to drop the box, and fly for my life.” He then awoke “trembling with terror.”7

The dream’s depressed tone and the dreamer’s yearning for spiritual nourishment have been commented upon by others.8 Joseph Sr. evidently possessed a melancholy disposition, which perhaps contributed to his reported excessive drinking. His dream visions were replete with motifs of death and destruction. His favorite hymn, according to his son William, was “Evening” by Baptist minister John Leland, the theme of which is the nearness of death.9 Yet, Palmyra residents describe Joseph Sr. as a happy drunkard, and he evidently had moments of frivolity for which he subsequently berated himself. On a deeper level, the dream reflects the same impotence Joseph experienced with regard to his father’s and brother’s disapproval of Lucy’s attendance at Methodist meetings. Because Joseph lacked the courage to stand up to adversity, true happiness was fleeting.

[p. 16]The dream may have been triggered in part by the revival of 1810-11 which was instrumental in Solomon Mack’s conversion. Solomon’s defection from Universalism left Joseph with a keener sense of being alone in a wasteland of religious orthodoxy. Lucy was encouraged by her moth­er’s success with her father, and she renewed her efforts to convert her husband and claim the promise of her 1803 dream. In this context, Joseph’s first dream vision not only expressed his religious and emotional conflict but more importantly asserted his independent spirit. As Lucy said of his behavior following his dream, Joseph “seemed more confirmed than ever, in the opinion that there was no order or class of religionists that knew any more concerning the kingdom of God than those of the world, or such as made no profession of religion whatever.”10 The dream permitted him to resist all invitations to convert and placed him in opposition to his wife. Indeed, he would hold back until his son founded the Church of Christ in 1830.

Probably during the summer or fall of 1812, the Smiths moved across the Connecticut River to Lebanon, New Hampshire. The years of hard work at Royalton had paid off, for Lucy remarked on their initial settlement in Lebanon: “We settled down and began to congratulate ourselves upon our prosperity. … We looked around us and said, what do we now lack. There is nothing which we have not a sufficiency of to make us and our children perfectly comfortable both for food and raiment as well as that which is necessary to a respectable appearance in society both at home and abroad.”11 Success did not cause them to slacken their efforts. “We doubled our diligence,” Lucy reported, “in order to obtain more of this world’s goods.”12 Lucy prepared to work through the ensuing winter by storing up 100 pounds of candles and 200 yards of cloth. Hyrum was sent to Moore’s Charity School in nearby Hanover, while Alvin and Sophronia, perhaps Joseph too, went to common school. William and Samuel remained at home. Lucy reported that she and her husband “were industriously laboring late and early to do all in our power for their [children’s] future welfare.”13 For the first time in their marriage, Joseph and Lucy began to think about providing for their old age. “We met with success on every hand,” Lucy later recalled.14 The Smiths were enjoying their prosperity and optimistically looking to the future when suddenly calamity struck.

Typhoid fever began a deadly march through the Connecticut Valley in 1812. Sophronia was the first in the family to fall ill. When Hyrum returned from the winter session at Hanover four weeks later, he too was sick. Alvin followed, then another child until all except the parents lay sick in bed. After three months, the physician attending Sophronia pronounced her case terminal. One night, as Sophronia lay wide-eyed and motionless and apparently dead, Lucy and Joseph fell to their knees and begged God to spare her life. Suddenly Lucy threw a blanket around Sophronia [p. 17]and gathered her into her arms. Pressing the child to her breast, she paced the floor, refusing to be consoled and determined not to lose another child. After a few moments, the child suddenly began to cry. Joseph’s and Lucy’s prayer would be answered. Lucy placed the girl on the bed and then collapsed next to her. Death had called upon the Smiths for the third time, but Lucy’s faith had barred it from entering.

Young Joseph seemed to have recovered, but one day he suddenly screamed out from pain in his shoulder. The symptom was misdiagnosed by the attending physician, Dr. Parker, as a sprain and treated as such despite the youngster’s objections. Two weeks later a boil underneath the shoulder blade was lanced and drained. The procedure appeared to be successful, but Joseph next felt a severe pain in his left shin bone. He was experiencing common complication of typhoid fever whereby bacteria in the blood seeds and then infects the bone. His leg swelled. After two weeks, the pain was unbearable. Lucy was pregnant and did all she could in her condition to alleviate her son’s suffering until she herself became ill. Hyrum then took over, sitting by his brother’s bed and pressing the infected leg between his hands, which helped to reduce the pain.

After the third week, the Smiths called for a surgeon, Dr. Stone, who made an eight-inch incision on the front of Joseph’s leg between the knee and the ankle. This provided temporary relief. The physician was called again; this time he cut to the bone. When the procedure proved ineffectual, he advised amputation of the leg. A small group of physicians from the Dartmouth Medical College soon appeared at the Smiths’ door. The details of this third attempt to save Joseph’s leg, as related by Lucy in 1845, are somewhat questionable. According to Lucy, the physicians came ready to perform the amputation, but she and her seven-year-old refused. She said she spoke privately with the doctors, imploring them to try once more to save the leg, going so far as to refuse them entrance to the room where Joseph lay until they promised not to amputate. Agreeing to her wishes, the doctors proposed to cut away only the infected part of the bone, an unconventional but sound procedure for which one of the doctors, Nathan Smith, was well-known.

Lucy’s account places her in the central role of saving her son’s leg. Plastic surgeon William D. Morain refers to Lucy’s story as “fabrication,” noting that “Nathan Smith was probably alone in American medicine at this time in arguing vehemently against amputation and in favor of limited removal of the dead portion of bone. … Thus, it was not Lucy Smith’s flash of surgical insight and persuasive power that convinced the pessimistic surgeons to do as she ‘had requested’ in saving Joseph’s leg. … In her distorted narrative she was not the powerless, frustrated person she most certainly had been at the critical moment of Joseph’s crisis.”15

Lucy said she allowed the doctors to enter the room where, in the presence of the [p. 18]boy’s father, who had attended to him throughout the ordeal, young Joseph heard the procedure explained. Upon hearing this plan, Joseph Sr. “burst into a flood of tears, and sobbed like a child,” according to Lucy.16 Here again, one notes the contrasting images: Lucy is strong and decisive while Joseph Sr. is weak and childlike.

In preparation for the surgery, Dr. Smith suggested that the child be bound with cords, to which the youngster objected. The seven-year-old was then asked to drink some brandy. He again refused. The doctor offered wine, which Joseph declined. All he needed, he said, was for his father to hold him during the operation. Such a request may have been prompted partly by a desire to see his father be strong in these circumstances in addition to the comfort his father would provide. The young Joseph tearfully insisted that his mother leave the house so she would not hear his screams. Yet, said Lucy, at a hundred yards, she could still hear her son’s cries and therefore flew to his side. When she entered the room, her son pleaded for her to go. When she ran into the room a second time, she saw the open wound and blood and her son “pale as a corpse”: “Big drops of sweat were rolling down his face, every feature of which depicted agony that cannot be described.”17 Lucy was forced out of the room and was prevented from reentering.

The operation would prove successful. Dr. Smith bore holes into the tibia, then broke off three large pieces of bone. As the leg healed, fourteen additional fragments worked their way to the surface. During his recuperation, Joseph became so emaciated that Lucy carried him around the house with ease. He slowly began to thrive again but relied on crutches for about three years and, through the remainder of his life, would retain a reminder in the form of a slight limp. Emotionally, the experience no doubt left scars that would not be easily healed.18

As soon as he could travel, Joseph accompanied his uncle Jesse to Salem, Massachusetts, to convalesce in the ocean breeze. With Jesse as tour guide, Joseph was no doubt surprised by the opulence he encountered in a city that had so obviously strayed from its Puritan heritage. Ironically, he would return to Salem in 1836 hoping to find treasure said to be buried in the basement of a house there.19

Lucy remembered that her family was afflicted with typhoid fever for an entire year and that the medical expenses left them in “very low circumstances.”20 Meanwhile, Katharine was born on 28 July 1813.21 Soon after her birth, Joseph Sr. had a second dream vision which reflected his desire for family unity in religion.

In his dream, Joseph found himself walking on a wide road through a desert-like field. He hesitated to travel such a barren path, but his spirit guide encouraged him to continue. Finally, he reached a narrower trail, which he followed to “a beautiful stream of water, which ran from east to west.” Along the bank was a rope “about as high as a man could reach.” In the distance was a pleasant valley with a single tree [p. 19]bearing some kind of fruit, similar in shape to a chestnut but white. The husks began to open and drop their contents onto the ground. Drawn to the tree, Joseph began feasting on its fruit, which he found to be “delicious beyond description.” He felt a desire to share the experience with his family, which at that time consisted of Lucy and seven children: Alvin, Hyrum, Sophronia, Joseph Jr., Samuel, William, and Katharine. After they commenced eating and praising God for this blessing, Joseph noticed, opposite the valley, a tall “spacious building” full of doors and windows wherein finely dressed people ridiculed the family and pointed a “finger of scorn” at them. The guide instructed Joseph to bring the rest of his family to the tree, but he responded that his entire family was present. The guide showed him two children standing to one side, perhaps representing Ephraim and the Smiths’ first, unnamed, stillborn child. Joseph brought the two children to the tree and the entire family knelt and began eating the fruit. Shortly, Joseph turned to the guide and asked the meaning of the building full of people. “It is Babylon,” the guide said, “and it must fall. The people in the doors and windows are the inhabitants thereof, who scorn and despise the saints of God, because of their humility.” Joseph awoke clasping his hands together for joy.22

The dream certainly represents Joseph Sr.’s wish for his entire family to be religiously united despite outside pressures to the contrary. It also expressed his desire to share with his family the rewards of personal faith. Yet, it reveals the pain and embarrassment he felt over his family’s poverty as well as his increasing sense of alienation resulting from his unorthodox religious views. The dream reassured him that his family would be saved and that his enemies would be destroyed. In bringing his two dead children to the tree, he rejected the orthodox idea that children who die without baptism are damned. This eased his mind about his children’s deaths, which he confessed in 1834 had caused him emotional pain.23

Probably in the late spring or early summer of 1814, the Smiths returned across the Connecticut River to Norwich, Vermont. Mounting debt may have necessitated the move across a state line. In Norwich, according to Lucy, the Smiths rented a farm from a “Squire Moredock,” apparently Constant Murdock, one of the town’s leading citizens. Here Joseph Sr. held on for three successive crop failures before permanently forsaking the unforgiving soil.

Lucy remembered that despite their first crop failure, her family was able to survive on the proceeds of the farm’s orchard as well as by their own in-home industry. When their crops failed the second year, Joseph Sr. determined to give Vermont one last chance, vowing to leave the state if he met with a third failure. He could not have known that a volcanic explosion on the island of Sumbawa in the Indian Ocean in 1815 would result in mid-summer snowstorms in 1816 for New England’s farmers. [p. 20]On 15 March 1816, perhaps anticipating a difficult harvest, town officials issued the Smiths a “Warning Out,” releasing the community from the responsibility of supporting the poor.24 The birth of Don Carlos on 25 March 1816 further encumbered an already burdened family.

About this time, Joseph Sr. had another of his remarkable dreams. This time he dreamed he was traveling on foot and was so sick and lame that he could barely walk. Finally his knee gave out and he fell to the ground. His spirit guide commanded him to keep walking until he reached a certain garden, promising him that he would be healed. Upon asking how he would recognize the place, the guide said that he should walk until he came to a large gate, open it, and that he would therein see the most beautiful flowers he had ever encountered. Joseph Sr. took hold of a staff and hobbled along with the “firmest resolution” to reach his destination “in order to be healed.” Upon entering the garden, he saw a walkway bordered by two long benches. Seated on these benches were twelve wooden images, six on each side, about the size of a large man. As he walked past them, each pair rose up and bowed to him. He turned to his guide to ask the meaning of the vision, but suddenly awoke.25

While the published version dates the dream to 1822, which would be during the Smiths’ residence in Manchester, New York, the preliminary manuscript of Lucy’s history indicates that it occurred in “the month that Carlos was born.”26 In this context, the dream foreshadowed the Smiths’ move to New York. If Lucy is right, the dream occurred when the Smiths had just experienced two crop failures and were about to encounter a third. Even before the seeds were planted, Joseph Sr. may have been turning his thoughts toward New York. Perhaps it would be his land of promise and healing where he would escape the indignities of poverty and find honor. But in reaching his destination, he would have to fight his own feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, and depression.

The dream’s conclusion was reminiscent of the Old Testament dream of Joseph wherein the ancient patriarch saw twelve sheaves in a field representing the twelve sons of Jacob. The eleven sheaves bowed to his sheave (Gen. 37:5-8). Although Joseph Sr. was not told the meaning of the twelve figures, his son would eventually appoint him presiding patriarch of a church that would include twelve apostles.

Recalling the conditions that caused her family’s third successive failed harvest, Lucy said that the crops were “blighted by [an] untimely frost … which well nigh produced a famine.”27 She does not say whether her family experienced hunger or even starvation, but the situation was desperate enough to justify drastic measures. One day Joseph Sr. came into the house and hesitantly told Lucy about an opportunity to depart for Palmyra, New York, with a Mr. Howard. Both he and Lucy knew that a separation would be necessary. Joseph was concerned about abandoning his family, [p. 21]nor could he leave town without first paying his debts. Following Lucy’s suggestion, he arranged with his debtors to pay his creditors. All parties were satisfied—or so the Smiths thought—and so Joseph left Norwich. Alvin and Hyrum followed their father for a distance before returning home. They knew it would be some time before they would see him again.

With winter fast approaching, Lucy prepared for her own difficult 300-mile trip by making “a great quantity of woolen clothing.”28 Snow had begun to fall by the time she received a letter from her husband asking her to join him. The letter informed her that he had made arrangements for her and the children to travel with Luther Howard, a cousin of his former traveling companion. Lucy began at once to load the wagon with furniture and other belongings but was interrupted when some of her husband’s creditors demanded immediate repayment. Lucy was forced to pay $150 from her traveling funds or risk being sued and detained in Nor­wich. This left her with approximately $70 for the trip. Nevertheless, after a determined Lucy placed her elderly mother in the wagon and bundled up her eight children, who ranged in age from ten months to eighteen years, with Howard at the reigns, she set out for New York.

They began their trip perhaps as late as January 1817.29 Joseph Jr. remembered that “the snow was generally deep through the country during this journey.”301 On the second day of the trip, the sleigh overturned and injured Lucy’s mother. Upon reaching Lydia’s home in Royalton, mother and daughter bid one another an emotional farewell, not knowing when, if ever, they might see each other again. Lydia admonished her daughter to “continue faithful in the exercise of every religious duty to the end of your days that I may have the pleasure of embracing you in another fairer world above.”31 In her history, Lucy remarked that the separation was a “severe trial to my feelings, one to which I shall ever look back with peculiar sensations that can never be obliterated.”32 Lucy does not express similar sentiments about her father, who may have been away from home at this time.33

Lucy found that Howard was unprincipled and cruel—fond of drinking, gambling, and women. At one point during the journey, a family named Gates joined them and Howard, so he could keep company with two of Gates’s daughters, forced young Joseph out of the wagon. Joseph had only recently discarded his crutches and “suffered the most excruciating weariness and pain.”34 When Alvin and Hyrum protested, Howard struck them with the handle of his whip. An already difficult trip quickly turned abusive and humiliating for the Smiths.

When the company reached a small town twenty miles west of Utica, New York, Lucy ran out of money and patience. In the morning, as she prepared for the day’s journey, a distraught Alvin came to her with news that Howard had thrown their [p. 22]things from the wagon and was preparing to leave with their wagon and team. Joseph remembered otherwise that his mother seized the horses by the reins and refused to let Howard leave.35 Lucy said she found Howard in the tavern and shouted to everyone that he was trying to steal her wagon and horses, then turned to him and said, “As for you sir I have no use for you and you can ride or walk the rest of the way as you please but I shall take charge of my own affairs.”36 It is not known if Howard stayed with the company for the remaining hundred miles or went his own way.

Out of funds, Lucy paid for her family’s lodging with bits of cloth, clothing, and finally at the last inn, Sophronia’s earrings. For the last leg of the trip, she arranged for Joseph to ride with the Gateses, but when he attempted to get into their sleigh, the driver, one of Gates’s sons, knocked him down and Joseph was “left to wallow in my blood until a stranger came along, picked me up, and carried me to the town of Palmyra.”37 This was undoubtedly a terrifying event for an eleven-­year-old boy.

After the difficult journey of about two weeks, Lucy and the children arrived in Palmyra with few possessions and two cents in cash. Lucy said the joy of “throwing myself and my children upon the care and affection of a tender husband and father” was reward enough for what she had suffered. She described her family’s joyous ­reunion: “The children surrounded their father clinging to his neck covering his face with tears and kisses that were heartily reciprocated by him.”38 Adversity had strength­ened the family against a hostile world for the time being.

9. W. Smith, “Notes Written on ‘Chambers’ Life of Joseph Smith,’” 29 (EMD 1:487); see also “W[illia]m. B. Smith’s last Statement,” [John W. Peterson to Editor], Zion’s Ensign (Independence, MO) 5 (13 Jan. 1894): 6 (EMD 1:512). John Leland (1754-1841) is credited with authoring this hymn which was universally used by American churches in the early nineteenth century. First published in 1792, it was popularized by the Congregationalists; Emma Smith included it in her 1835 selection of hymns (see A Collection of Sacred Hymns for the Church of the Latter Day Saints, Selected by Emma Smith [Kirtland, OH: F. G. Williams and Co., 1835], 62-63).

21. Historians generally date Katharine’s birth to 1812, following Lucy Smith’s dating (L. Smith, Biographical Sketches, 41). The date also appears in Don Carlos Smith’s family record of ca. 1840 and on Katharine Smith’s tombstone (“Copy of Don Carlos Smith’s family record written by his own hand,” ca. 1839-40, 7-8, LDS Church Archives [EMD 1:579]; Zion’s Advocate 59 [Apr. 1982]: 59). However, a Smith family genealogy recorded in Joseph Smith’s 1834 journal by Oliver Cowdery and another recorded in the Joseph Smith family Bible, probably in the late 1830s, date Katharine’s birth to 1813 (Joseph Smith, Manuscript History of the Church, 1839, Book A-1, 9-10, Joseph Smith Papers, LDS Church Archives [EMD 1:575]; Joseph Smith Jr., Family Bible, private possession, photographs of which appear in the Ensign, Jan. 1984, 33 [EMD 1:582]). In an affidavit signed by Katharine in April 1881, she stated, “I will be Sixty Eight years of age July 28th, 1881” (Katharine Smith Salisbury, Affidavit, 15 Apr. 1881, Artificial Collection, Community of Christ [formerly RLDS Church] Archives, Independence, MO; published in Saints’ Herald 28 [1 June 1881]: 169 [EMD 1:519]).

22. L. Smith, Biographical Sketches, 58-59 (EMD 1:256-59). The dream is not found in Lucy’s preliminary manuscript. According to her later recollection, the spirit guide told Joseph that the fruit represented the “pure love of God, shed abroad in the hearts of all those who love him, and keep his commandments.” However, this interpretation was probably inspired by the Book of Mormon (cf. 1 Ne. 11:22).

24. “A Record of Strangers Who Are Warned Out of Town, 1813-1818,” 53, Norwich Town Clerk’s Office, Norwich, VT (EMD 1:666-68).

25. L. Smith, Biographical Sketches, 70-71; L. Smith, Preliminary Manuscript, Frag. 4 (EMD 1:278-79). Note that there are twelve wooden images in the published version but twenty-four in the manuscript.